


And We Move As One

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 4x15 spoilers, Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Inhumanophobia, The Framework, spec fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-09-26 23:51:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9934352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: It's the two of them against the dystopian Framework, and with every card they turn over, it seems another one of their former friends is against them. When Framework!Fitz breaks Daisy's heart, it's up to Jemma to assure her it's them against the world. (Literally.)-Title from Yorktown (The World Turned Upside Down) from Hamilton





	1. The World Turns Upside Down

**Author's Note:**

> I have quite a few ideas for scenes, not necessarily mutually exclusive, of Skimmons in the Framework. I will probably add them here. In the meantime, enjoy this chapter, heavily inspired by a parallel scene in 4x15.

Since the Framework versions of themselves have no reason to know each other, and Jemma – being allegedly dead – has no living space of her own, and Daisy’s apartment is also home to a nightmare, they end up booking a hotel room. It’s one of the skeezier ones, since Jemma – being allegedly dead – has no ID, but it has wifi and a wall against which they can set up a pin-up board like the paranormal investigators they basically are. The board tracks Daisy, Ward, Coulson, and now Fitz. Unlike Coulson, a humble and somewhat average teacher, Fitz is a big name. In fact, the information on him is so vast they couldn’t fit it in this hotel, let alone this room, let alone this space on the board. Holed up in here for the afternoon, they try to narrow it down. 

“So, what is he, some…Tony Stark character?” Jemma speculates, pacing the hotel room carpet. She passes a pen from one hand to the other as her mind struggles to wrap its way around this world; a world in which she has known Fitz for ten years, and he has never known her at all. A world in which he goes to the opera and wears suits that cost more than cars, and drives cars that cost more than their apartment. Who knows what a Fitz raised like that would have, would think, would know? 

“Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist?” Daisy smirks at the image. “I can’t imagine Fitz as a playboy. He seems like a one and done kinda guy.” 

“Ours might be,” Jemma points out, “but several million dollars goes pretty far in the dating department.” 

“I hear that,” Daisy concedes, but it’s still strange to scroll through all these pictures of Fitz out and about – oftentimes with women, though the nature of the relationship is usually ambiguous - doing activities one could only describe as _schmoozing._ He’s got a lofty air about him, and definitely money to spare. He’s arrogant, but in an attractive way; a way that makes you think that maybe you could be that one person he pays real attention. He’s not quite kind - polite, but aloof. It’s a strange balance between on the one hand, exactly how one might imagine the stubborn, arrogant side of Fitz would show up if polished with a ridiculous amount of money, and on the other, something Daisy never imagined Fitz could be. 

“So…does it check out?” Jemma fiddles with the pen with increasing anxiety. Realistically, she knows this Fitz isn’t hers and can’t stay no matter what, but that doesn’t make him any less hers, from her perspective. She’s already jealous at the thought of him with someone else; she’s already curious as to what causes he would donate; she’s already wondering, does he still create? Or does he stand on other people’s backs? Does he improve the world? Or does he, like so many others, use his gifts for gain and damn the consequences? 

She’s already ready to be mad at him. To hate him. To be ready to kill him if that’s what it takes – because in a way, that’s what it will take – to get _her_ Fitz, the real Fitz, back. She’s so preoccupied by her own efforts to secure this fury and hold onto it for when her will inevitably wavers, that she doesn’t hear the way Daisy’s breath catches before she announces: 

“I’ve got something.” 

The video is labeled: _Leopold Fitz on The Inhuman Debate._ Daisy already has a sinking feeling about what side he’s going to fall on in this perverted reality, but even so, nothing can prepare her for actually hearing it. 

 _“Mr Fitz,”_ says the interviewer. _“You told the Herald last week that you believe Inhumans are a ‘menace to society’ and an ‘inherent threat’ – could you expand on what you mean by that?”_

Fitz stares the camera down, barely fidgeting under what should be an accusation.

 _“I think I was fairly clear about that, Steve,”_ he says. _“They’re a danger to us. By their very natures, they’re a danger. If we don’t create protections for ourselves – in our laws, on our streets, in our homes – then it’ll be all too easy for them to overrun us. We don’t know who they are; we don’t know what they could do. Electrocute us? Mind control us? Rip our hearts out of our chests? We have to be prepared.”_

Daisy’s fingers are numb on the sides of the tablet. She can only watch and hope this train-wreck will right itself. It feels almost like a bad dream, except that someone is digging her insides out with a melon-baller at the same time.

 _“Some say,”_ Steve points out, _“that your calls - and the calls of those you align yourself with – for these pre-emptive ‘protections’ as you call them, are contravening or threatening to contravene human rights by for example, invading rights to privacy and freedom of association, criminalising and vilifying certain groups, and are in fact creating a group of second-class citizens, being the Inhumans. How do you respond to those claims?”_

_“Well, Steve, I would say that it’s simply not valid to think like that. It’s misconceived the issue. The base of it is, really, they’re not human. Right?”_

_“Well, that’s quite a semantic-“_

_“No, it’s not, actually. They’re not human. They’re not. That’s not me speaking rhetoric, that’s biological fact. A fact they seem to take pride in, actually – ‘Inhuman and proud,’ ‘alien and proud,’ ‘mutant and proud,’ don’t they say? Well, I’m sorry, but they can’t do that and then turn around and demand the same rights we give to humans. To me it’d be like – it’d be like giving robots equal rights. Nobody would expect us to do that. It’d be absolutely ludicrous. Not just that, it would be dangerous. Right? The prime directives exist for a reason. All I’m saying is, we need some prime directives for Inhumans. It’s the same thing, Steve, it’s the same thing.”_  

With that, the interview is apparently over. Or at least, that’s where the video cuts off. Jemma’s fingers are digging into Daisy’s shoulder where she’d leaned over to watch. Her mind struggles to process it, struggles to process _Fitz,_ struggles to process how awed she is by the astoundingly smooth logic, and by the astounding barbarity of it. 

She does notice, however, Daisy’s hands beginning to shake. 

The rest of the room is perfectly still, but Daisy’s fingers, her hands, her arms, are shaking. Not just trembling or shivering, but the uncontrollable, unstoppable, ceaseless shudder of a shock and a fear so intense it permeates bone. Horror, anxiety, rage, pain, sorrow. It shakes through her – her arms, her shoulders, her entire body - as if it intends to shake her apart, and she can’t stop it. 

She stares at Fitz’s face on the screen, and doesn’t even notice for several seconds after the fact that it has been blurred by tears. They sting her eyes but slip down her cheeks unchecked, leaving a cold and clammy feeling behind. She has to force herself to reach forward, slowly, and put the tablet down before she snaps it. 

Jemma helps, her gentle face taking the place of Fitz’s.

“Daisy?” she asks gently. “Are you okay?” 

Her voice shakes, because she knows. She knows the fear and the terror and the pain of realizing unequivocally that _it’s_ _not him,_ but still not being able to do anything about it. 

Daisy nods, a little frantically as if to try and compensate for the tears, but when Jemma tugs on her arms, offering a hug, she falls into it gratefully. 

“It’s not him,” Daisy whispers, her voice choked with tears. _It’s not him_ , because he would never say those things, he would never think them. _It’s not him_ , because his face – the face of her best friend – and his voice – the voice that told her she was good, she was herself, she was okay – are just a shell of him. 

“No,” Jemma agrees, stroking Daisy’s back in a soothing motion. “He is your best friend and he loves you with all his heart. He will protect you until his dying day.” 

She’s crying too, now, just a little; weeping for Daisy, and for Fitz, and for their precious friendship, twisted and destroyed like so many other things in this world. 

Daisy nods. She knows. But it’s hard to know, when the same hands that once held her are trying to strangle her. 

“We’re going to get him back,” Jemma promises, strength in her voice. “We made it out of a robot apocalypse, we’re flying a plane we can’t fly, and we made it into another world. We’ve come this far. We’re going to get him back. Fitz, and Coulson, and Mack, and May – this sick place can’t have them. Alright? It can’t take them from us. I won’t let it. And I know you won’t either.” 

Daisy pulls back from Jemma’s embrace, clenching her hands into fists. She wipes the tears from her face and stares Jemma hard in the eyes. 

“You’re right,” she says. “Let’s finish this.” 


	2. Red Pill Blue Pill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The time has come for them to escape the Framework, but Aida has other plans.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title is a reference to The Matrix, which is also referenced in this chap.
> 
> Rshps: FitzSimmons (romantic), Skimmons (platonic), Team (platonic).

Jemma wonders if perhaps they could have chosen a less shady-looking meeting place than a warehouse apparently wedged between a coffee shop and a fish and chip shop in the middle of nowhere. If nowhere is safe for them, since Aida knows all, perhaps they could have gone with a nice beach or something. Then again, she supposes with a metallic taste in her mouth, everyone meeting here has worse things to worry about than the location – like facing, and trusting, their enemies on the whim of two strangers. 

One by one, they arrive; hesitant, but unable to shake the feeling that something has been wrong for a long while now, and determined to find out what. May has her arms crossed, passively studying the arriving faces with an almost aggressively blank expression. Coulson looks like he wants to make conversation with the next person he sees, just to release the tension, but he’s already tried with May and she didn’t respond. Eventually, Mack comes in too. He has a picture of Elena that Daisy had given him earlier – he even starts to talk to Coulson about it – but it’s clear that he doesn’t remember who she is; it’s like they’ve told him about a high school friend, or given him a vision or a dream. Then Mace comes in, the face of managerial enthusiasm as per usual, and it’s almost a relief that he still looks like the kind of person who would say something like _a team that trusts is a team that triumphs._ Less reassuring is the fact that he also looks like the kind of person who’s about to pick a fight with May and destroy this entire building.

Jemma steps forward. 

“Hello everyone,” she greets. “I’m sure you’re wondering why we’ve brought you all here today.” 

Her voice is a little shaky. It’s taken them a long time to get here and she has no real idea what’s supposed to happen, or where Daisy is, and she’s painfully conscious of the remaining Framework hostage who is yet to arrive. Yet she soldiers on. 

“The truth is –“ 

“None of it’s real.” 

There he is, that voice, it floods her with relief. Her head spins and she seeks him out in the darkness, until the world rights itself and he’s standing inside the doorway, staring at her with a painfully familiar expression of awe. 

“Is it?” he challenges, speaking directly to her as if there’s no Hydra, no Shield, noone else here at all. He sweeps toward her with the same excitement, putting together a theory just like any other now that she’s dropped the clues. “None of this is real. We’ve been drugged or something, and you and that Daisy woman know something about it. You know us, right? In the real world. That’s why it’s us. And we all know each other, out there, and that’s why you’ve brought us all here, together. And you and me, we…” 

He’s so close to her now that her breath hitches. She stares into his eyes, and he stares back, and she can’t quite tell what she’s seeing. Does he remember her, or is he hopeful at the prospect of doing so? Does he love her, or does he wonder what it is, to love her? 

Should she kiss him?

Would it help?

Would it matter? 

A bright flash of light makes her jump, and she looks around in befuddlement. The others don’t seem to notice, even as they look around themselves, wondering what she’s looking at, and it happens again. And there’s something- there’s something wrong with her eyes? No, it’s back. No. It’s _pixels._ Just for a second. Unless she’s having a stroke, which is not impossible, but the more likely explanation is of course that _they are in a computer._ They’re in a computer built by a genius, a robot and a demon-book - a computer they’re about to beat - and it’s probably going to put up a fight. 

And suddenly, Daisy’s hurtling towards her, yelling at them all to run. The walls of the warehouse in which they have gathered melt away and they’re on the street, and the city keeps changing, and the rest of the team must notice by now that something is wrong, but they follow anyway, more and more convinced as the world around them gives up on its illusion of reality. 

Daisy stops all of a sudden and they all crowd into her. They’re on a New York street, where it all began; where she remembers watching Mike Peterson the very first day she stumbled across Shield. There’s no Mike this time, though, just random pedestrians, who are one by one, turning toward them… and turning into Aida. 

Daisy raises her fists. 

“Jemma, we’ve got a problem,” she announces. “They’re going Mr Smith on us. Got any ideas?” 

She glances back over her shoulder, and so many of them are gone. Coulson. Mace. May, as soon as she lowers into a fighting crouch, disappears into thin air like she’s never been there. Mack picks up a road-works marker, one of those plastic tubes full of concrete, and then he’s gone too.

“What’s happening?” Daisy wonders. “Are they waking up?” 

“She knows we’re here,” Jemma says, wide-eyed and for a moment, paralysed. Fitz is still here, but she almost can’t bear the thought of watching him slip through her fingers once again. 

Then one of the Aidas lunges at Daisy and there’s nothing else for it but for her to fight, and Jemma grabs Fitz’s face and tries to force his attention to stay in this world as it crumbles around them. 

“Fitz. Look around you. Where are you?” Jemma pleads. “ _Tell me where you are.”_

And then he’s gone, and she feels her hands slip through empty space. 

Then Daisy grabs her and pulls, and they’re in the graveyard. Aidas swarm around them and Daisy and Jemma fight and run and somehow fend them off long enough to make it to Jemma’s gravestone. 

“Go,” Daisy says, “I’m right behind you.” 

And Jemma knows better than to believe that, but it’s too late – she’s already falling, lurching, waking. 

-

She wakes up in the dark, in a haze of blue and black. The stuffy smell of the Zephyr’s air fills her lungs and she can feel the table beneath her and the wires around her. Elena’s hands are on her after a few seconds, easing the contraption off her head and helping her sit as her hands flail, struggling to escape.

Though her knees fall out from under her when she tries to make them bear her weight, Jemma throws herself at Daisy’s bed. She can hear the warning alarms, but she waits, on edge, for Daisy’s eyes to snap open. 

-

There’s nothing else in the world but the fight. 

The grass beneath her feet is a blur, and even her body feels alien to her. Aidas fall around her easier than real people she’s had to fight, but there’s an endless stream of them and it feels like she can hardly take a breath before the next one – or ones? - descend. They crowd her away from the exit point, but she doesn’t have time to linger on that; on her toes, she’s in survival mode. Like Mr Smith, the Aidas seem to be something other than human, than robot, than matter – they’re almost liquid. They are pixels, after all. But they are exhausting her.

Daisy crouches, gathering her thoughts and her breath for one long, stretching second before leaping to her feet and throwing her arms out either side. 

The plan was to throw the Aidas away from herself and make a dive back toward Jemma’s gravestone marker, but it doesn’t matter. In that second, desperate for survival, she forgot – she _forgot_ she has no powers here, and all of a sudden she’s being lifted into the air, a hand crushing the breath out of her throat. Out of the corner of her eye, she spies the gravestone, just a few feet away, and Jemma’s warning echoes in her mind. 

_If you die in the Framework, you definitely die._

There’s only one Aida now, and it’s as if there’s only been one all along, as she smirks up at Daisy’s rapidly draining face. She could crush Daisy’s throat, snap her neck if she wanted to, but she’s enjoying watching the life drain from her fiercest opponent. If she could feel pleasure, she thinks, this would be something like it. 

Daisy’s long past kicking out, now. It’s all she can do to try and pry Aida’s fingers from around her neck. She wonders if Jemma knows enough about coding to maybe move the exit, or create a distraction, but given the extreme complexity of the code and Aida’s guardianship, it would probably be no good. Would Jemma come back to rescue her? Should she? 

Someone does. 

“Mace?” 

Daisy drops the floor, and tastes blood in her mouth. 

Mace stabs through the Aida that had held her. There’s no blood, but her body bends and collapses and falls to the ground, dead. Over the body,

“Why are you back?” Daisy demands. “What are you doing here?” 

She struggles to her feet, ready to fight again, but Mace waves her off and points toward the exit. 

“Palm Springs,” he says. “It’s warm out.” 

And Daisy knows what he’s doing, and she’s almost painfully grateful. His expression is solemn, but hopeful; he’s not putting on a show anymore, he actually gets to do it for real. Be a hero. Save the day. 

His body’s already failing, Daisy recalls, and she smiles a little. She nods at him, inspiring and tough, and drops out of the fight. 

Then she runs. 

She leaps across the space between her and the exit marker, heartbreak and joy swelling in her chest until it hurts, and until she wakes up on her bench gasping for breath, blood dripping from her nose, whole body shaking. 

“Daisy! Daisy!” Jemma calms her, pulling her attention from the overwhelming world to one familiar face. “It’s okay, you’re back. You’re okay.” 

Jemma pulls her into a hug, and Daisy relishes the way it grounds her and helps her pull her flustered thoughts all together. 

“You almost quaked us out of the sky just now,” Jemma murmurs. “What happened?” 


End file.
